Grasshopper vs. Rakuten Viber

Grasshopper is well suited for basic needs of texting in and out as well as calling out if you would like to avoid using your personal line. It also eliminates the need to have a dedicated land land in your office or business. You can obtain a vanity number and forward calls through grasshopper.

Incentivized

As mentioned previously, it is easy to use and access since the you can chat, send voice memos or stickers in a conversation. So in overall it's very entertaining. But throughout that, the audio quality can seem to be a bit off. (Could be personal headset issue) Overall that is the only issue that is present or consistent.

Incentivized

• I like that there are differing voicemails for each extension, to keep up with the image of calling a separate line.
• I love the voicemail text emails. I believe we pay a little extra, but worth every penny for those urgent calls while I am in a meeting.
• The cost is very reasonable for the value added to our company.

Incentivized

• Viber is a cross platform product. It does not matter if someone uses Android or iOS device, it will work exactly the same.
• Also the desktop version is very good. You can switch between the desktop and mobile versions within a conversation and see updates right away.
• It's a very international product. It has been available for very long time, which makes it very wide spread - it has a good user base.
• You can see the status of your messages.

Incentivized

• It would be nice to have the ability to transfer some calls to another Grasshopper IVR, for those customers who mistakenly dial the wrong number (we have two incoming numbers, one for corporate and one for sales).
• Likewise, it would be nice to have the ability to forward to a toll-free number, which would have allowed us to work around the inability to transfer between IVRs (see above).
• Lastly, it would be great to have an 'emergency' switch setting (default off but could be toggled on) that would let us override all IVR settings and transfer all incoming calls elsewhere (either to a direct dial or toll free number) for those rare times when we cannot take any calls (such as a weather emergency OR the one time each year we take all of our staff on a retreat) - that would allow us to send all calls to a backup answering service rather than just voicemail.

Incentivized

• When someone sends a file in Viber, the program automatically saves it in your phone memory. This means that you must delete them manually and it really annoys me, as it takes a lot of time to do that.
• It contains enormous amounts of adds.
• There is file sharing limit.

Incentivized

The admin functions are kind of confusing in the old interface which was my most recent experience on the admin side.

Incentivized

When I was setting up my account I contacted support a couple of times. They were also very professional, personable, and helpful. Their response is prompt and thorough. I'm confident I can get any question answered as well as help with any issue I might have. That's pretty important to me.

Incentivized

I have not frequently used the support for Viber as I have not had many problems with it on my phone. I did use support one time for problems with the computer application and used the forums to solve my problems. They were fairly easy to follow and I appreciated the online help in that format.

Incentivized

I have not used any other phone services like Grasshopper. I know that there is another option out there called Ruby, which is more like a virtual receptionist but since I did not try it out I cannot compare the two. When I started my company I found the services that Grasshopper offers to be perfect. It still works for us and we have no need to change to anything else right now.

Incentivized

End-to-end encryption scrambles my messages and delivers them as a scrambled code to my friend's device, whether mobile or desktop, so that only their device can decode them into plain text. If my friend's phone is turned off or they don't have access to the internet, my message will be stored on Viber's servers (for a limited time) until their device is ready to receive it.

Because Viber can't access or read my private conversations in the first place, Viber can't sell them.

Incentivized

• It's allowed us to keep cost down. Other phone systems can seriously get outrageous in implementation and monthly fees!
• It's allowed our team the confidence to work in locations outside of the office and still be seen as professionals.
• It's decreased the amount of time spent on unwanted sales calls via the call screening application.

Incentivized

• Viber saves me financially since I am now able to communicate with my international clients for free.
• Viber helps keep my clients engaged by the fact that I can so easily share photos, which is important as a freelance photographer.
• Viber allows me to make my messages to clients appealing in a visual way, which I have noticed helps drive actions of my clients, such as remembering to book their next session or pay for their photo order.

Incentivized